


Wake

by onceuponachildhood



Series: Alder - the Harper Shepard story [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 02:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10561570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponachildhood/pseuds/onceuponachildhood
Summary: Shepard wakes after a mission gone wrong.





	

The first thing Harper recognized when she woke was the bitter, sharp scent of antiseptic. Funny, she didn’t remember going to a hospital. No, the last thing Shepard remembered was screaming, and pain, and a collapsing building. She kept her eyes closed, instead focusing on her other senses.

Smell, now that she was paying attention, was indeed registering sterile and sharp like antiseptic. She couldn’t smell anything else, though - no snuck-in perfume or shitty hospital coffee. She didn’t smell anything that would tell her who’d been in her room; she should at least have had a visitor. She couldn’t hear anyone either - no visitors, no nurses, nothing except the steady beeping of machinery. Huh. Carefully, she shifted her fingers. Under her left hand, the bed felt softer, nicer than a hospital bed. Under the right if felt the same, but also amped up, somehow. Like touching the bed left a tingly wake, her fingers waking up after being asleep. Eyes still closed, Shepard shifted her toes under the blanket. Her left foot felt fine and the blanket was just light enough to be comfortable. Yet her right foot prickled at the contact, and the pins-and-needles feeling shot up her leg all the way to her knee. _Huh_.

At least all of her fingers and toes were moving. Shepard could count that as a win. She opened her eyes slowly, that whatever lights there were wouldn’t hurt her. Thankfully, her room was kept dim, though she could see brighter lights under the door. Shepard took a long, steadying breath, and sat up. She felt a little light-headed though with no idea how long she’d been unconscious, and the IV uncomfortably shifting in her left hand every time she flexed her fingers, she could assume she hadn’t eaten a real meal in a while. She glanced around her room as if she could divine the secrets of her illness from it. The walls were as bare and sterile as the room smelled, no art or color or holo-screens at all.  There wasn’t much furniture other than her bed, just a chair by the door. Someone had left a labcoat lying over the back and Shepard squinted her eyes at it. Maybe there would be a nametag, or… she swallowed once, roughly, when she spotted a familiar orange logo emblazoned on the lapel.

_Cerberus._

That bed was suddenly the last place Harper wanted to be. She braced herself on her hands and swung her legs to dangle over the edge of the bed, ignoring the almost painful tingle in the right. Even though her right hand had also ramped up in pain, she needed it to get the IV out. This was nothing; she was a sniper. An _infiltrator_. Hands were as deadly for her as her gun. She breathed tightly through her teeth to ignore the sensation and carefully pulled the IV from her other hand. That done, she just had to unhook the heart monitor. She raised her right arm to open her omni-tool.

Her omni-tool was gone. “Fuck.” The bastards weren’t satisfied with just taking her prisoner, they took her omni-tool too. They’d regret that.

Shepard took another breath to steady herself and tugged the wheeled cart towards her. If she couldn’t hack in through her ‘tool, she could hack it through the machine herself. Medical interfaces were simple enough, and she was glad that her hacking skills hadn’t seemed to take a hit, though typing with her right hand felt clumsy and slow. But she got it done, and slipped the clip tracking her heartrate off her fingertip in triumph. That done, all that was left was to get off the bed and leave. Simple. Harper snorted. Nothing was ever simple for her. Hopefully the light-headedness would fade after she got moving. With a pleading thought that felt suspiciously like a prayer, Shepard slid off the bed until both her feet hit the floor with a thud.

Not a thud, she realized, taking a step. Her left foot sounded normal enough, bare skin of her foot slapping against the tiled floor. Her right foot made a sound like a clank. It buckled under her and she hit the floor, rolling so that her wrists and face wouldn’t take the brunt of the impact. Her breath left her in a whoosh when she landed hard on her shoulder, and for a moment she just closed her eyes and tried to get her bearings. _Breathe, Shepard. You’ve gotta go._ Her inner voice sounded suspiciously like Nihlus, wry and worried at once, and it gave her the strength to sit up and take stock of the situation.

Her right hand, now that she was really looking at it, gleamed faintly metallic in the light from the door. Her right foot did the same, and she yanked up the leg of the military-type sweats in an almost frantic manner. The shine went up, up, meeting her flesh above the knee in a decidedly familiar way. Prosthetics. She’d been given _prosthetics_ while _sedated_. At least it hadn’t been her dominant hand; she had the sudden urge to hold a sniper rifle just to see if it felt the same and suppressed a hysterical laugh.

She tried to flex her right toes again, and the metallic toes flexed. She tried to roll her ankle, and her new ankle rolled. Good prosthetics, at least. She made a fist with her right hand, pins-and-needles be damned. A good, solid, firm fist formed. Not just any prosthetics, but cybernetics. That was something even Spectre budget wouldn’t get her; where the hell had Cerberus gotten the money? Most confusingly of all, they’d given these expensive… upgrades… to her. Her, Harper Shepard. An alien sympathizer if there ever was one. They had to have a reason for doing this to her, keeping her here. Wherever “here” was. Right. She could wonder about the cybernetics later. For now, she had to get away from Cerberus.

The bed was sturdy enough to leverage herself up, at least. Shepard used the corner of the bed to lean against until she was upright, and then shifted until all her weight was on her new leg. It trembled a little at the strain, and the pain center of her brain probably looked like a fireworks display, but it held. Good. She glanced around the room one last time but there wasn’t anything that could help her escape. She let go of the bed and took a few steps. She didn’t fall down. with a careful push she opened the door and stepped out. Nobody came running, nobody was there to stop her. The light was bright, but not blinding, and she took a few bolder strides. When her new leg bared the weight, her lips twitched toward a grin. Good. _Good_. She was that much closer to getting the fuck away from Cerberus and getting off this - planet? station? she didn’t know, but she’d find out.

  
And these assholes would regret keeping her here.


End file.
